“Oh god, I’d forgotten all about that!” Potts enthuses. “That’s when Baseball was just a solo thing I was doing in my room – I didn’t have a band. I think at the time Laura (Macfarlane) was still in Sleater-Kinney, and Ninetynine was just her solo stuff. It’s weird – given the future that was to unravel – the fact I joined her band and everything that’s happened since then. When that compilation came out we were isolated, doing different things, we just happened to end up on the same record.”
Baseball was later reborn as a renowned touring band, but Potts says at first it was just an excuse to hang around Europe between Ninetynine tours. “I just wanted to keep playing – I had a taste for it and it lasted six or seven years. We’d finish the Ninetynine tour, then the Baseball guys would fly over and it’d start again.”
Given the international acclaim Baseball enjoy (having played across four continents with the likes of Tricky, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Mountain Goats) it seems odd it started as an excuse to just hang around overseas. Surely there must’ve been some grander genesis to the violin-driven, proto-Arab-punk stylings of Baseball?
“I bought my first violin in Cairo in 2001 when I was travelling around the Middle East with my girlfriend. I just played it and annoyed the hell out of her for four months. I’d be in the bathroom where we were staying and it sounded like I was killing a cat. She really hated it, but she was good about it,” he laughs. “I got back to Australia and started introducing it into Ninetynine sets and it just built from there.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing; I was influenced by what was around me when I was travelling. I would just play what I was hearing tonally, but Laura [of Ninetynine] said I was playing some kind of weird Arabic scales… So I just took it from there, playing block-chords and rhythm. That’s how the violin became what it is [with Baseball].”
Arabic rhythm violin, you say? “Well, I’ve always been a drummer so that percussive thing’s in my DNA. The main thing for me [in Baseball] is just to sing; the violin’s like a chugging mid-crunch rhythm thing to punctuate the singing. I’ve broken a few of them along the way.”
With no plans to play again in the foreseeable future, this gig is being billed as Baseball’s last ever Melbourne show. Is this a Glenn Wheatley-esque ploy to bring in the punters? “No!” Potts laughs. “But as a continuing thing I can’t see [Baseball] happening. We all love to play together and catch up, but everyone’s got a bit too much else on.”
So is it beers and tears expected for the final show then? “I dunno about the tears, but definitely a few beers! And the No East-West Tunnel campaign is a worthwhile excuse to play a show,” Potts says. “The last time we played the Old Bar it was the first ever gig in our current lineup (consisting of Potts, Monica Fikerle of Love of Diagrams, Evelyn Morris of Pikelet and Ben Butcher of The Assassination Collective). That was in about 2005 and we haven’t played there since. I’m pretty keen to get back there and make amends for that first show!”
BY JULIAN DOUGLAS
